A crisis is looming on the nation's 4,000,000 miles of streets, roads, and highways. Driven by population growth, the demand for mobility as a fundamental economic need is at odds with our ability to fund and build new highways and maintain a clean environment. There are three major concerns. First is the safety of our highways. It is known that over 40,000 people die on our nation's highways every year. This costs the country over $160 billion in lost lives and in property damage. Second is the congestion. Seventy-nine percent of the nation's interstate highways during peak hours are now congested. And third, there is the problem of environment. The challenge is to plan an intelligent mass transit system so that technology saves lives, time and money, and the environment.
Unfortunately, the problem with all forms of mass transit, such as subways, trains, buses, and planes, is that although they can do a good job of getting you from Point A to Point B, just as important to you, is getting to Point A and from Point B. In fact, mass transit is a misnomer. It can hardly be called "mass" when 96% of the people choose not to use it even when they are paying to subsidize it. It cost more in time, money, and inconvenience to drive to a station, park, get to the station, board, travel to a point near your destination, get off, and then find a means to get to your final destination. When this is all taken into consideration, people elect to use their own automobiles even if at a snail's pace on congested highways. What is needed is a single transportation system taking you from origin to destination rapidly and safely.
Recognizing this failing of mass transit to solve our traffic problems, in 1991 Congress authorized $1 billion to develop an intelligent transportation system. The U.S. Department of Transportation looked at 150 concepts, studied 37 in detail, and ended up with four finalists.
The one seemingly offering the most promise was the automated highway system. An automated highway system is sometimes described in terms of an electronic chauffeur. Everything is done automatically. At a minimum, an automated highway system-capable vehicle requires special on-board systems to provide such functions as lane following, remotely actuated variable throttle/speed control, vehicle-to-vehicle gap sensing, and sophisticated crash avoidance systems. To experience a ride on the automated highway system is to engage in a very unique experience. It is empowering in that you think that in the first instance that you are giving up something when you give up control of the vehicle, but when you recognize that doing so puts you in a much safer environment, and it allows you to operate your vehicle in a much more efficient manner, then you begin to understand how you are actually empowered. Unfortunately, efforts to develop an automated highway system have been dismantled. The simple fact is that a highway lane cannot be taken out of service until there are enough automated cars to use it, and conversely, no one will buy an automated car until there is a lane to drive it and neither will the manufacturers build them.
Another finalist concept is called the pallet. In its simplest design, the pallet concept involves an automated self-propelled vehicle, essentially a cab-less, flatbed truck upon which a conventional full-sized car could be readily loaded and unloaded and carried on some type of automated highway system. Some of the advantages of the pallet concept is that it could be extremely safe and would have universal access. All potential automated highway system users could access a pallet-based system with their existing vehicles. Some of the disadvantages of the pallet concept is that it would take a lot of land space for achieving the entry and exit functions. Further, the storing of pallets would be a problem.
A transportation unit that enables a traveler to never leave his or her car, that is fast, pollution free, safe, and economical, holds much promise.